We're No Longer in Smartphone Plateau. We're in the Smartphone Decline. (nymag.com) 205
The days of double-digit smartphone growth are over -- and the next decade may start to see smartphone sales decline. A report adds: From roughly 2007 until 2013, the smartphone market grew at an astonishing pace, posting double-digit growth year after year, even during a global recession. They were the good years, the type that would inspire a Scorsese montage: millions and then billions of smartphones going out; billions and then trillions of dollars in rising company valuations; every year new models of phones hitting the market, held up triumphantly at events that were part sales pitch, part tent revival. (To nail the Scorsese effect, imagine "Jumpin' Jack Flash" playing while you think about it.)
But just like every Scorsese movie, the party ends. Smartphone growth began to slow starting in 2013 or 2014. In 2016, it was suddenly in the single digits, and in 2017 global smartphone shipments, for the first time, actually declined -- fewer smartphones were sold than in 2017 than in 2016. Every smartphone manufacturer is now facing a world where, at best, they can hope for single-digit growth in smartphone sales -- and many seem to be preparing for a world where they face declines.
But just like every Scorsese movie, the party ends. Smartphone growth began to slow starting in 2013 or 2014. In 2016, it was suddenly in the single digits, and in 2017 global smartphone shipments, for the first time, actually declined -- fewer smartphones were sold than in 2017 than in 2016. Every smartphone manufacturer is now facing a world where, at best, they can hope for single-digit growth in smartphone sales -- and many seem to be preparing for a world where they face declines.
Wafer (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh yes, and let's get the glass to the very edge...no wait! Let's make the WHOLE case out of glass. And special glass that's over 9000% more transmissive of visible light...never mind equally more brittle.
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You mean like the ones they carry on "The Expanse"?
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You mean like the ones they carry on "The Expanse"?
No. The battery life on those is way too long.
Prices too damn high (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone I know "wants" a new phone, but they don't want to pay a grand.
Re:Prices too damn high (Score:5, Interesting)
Price creep the last few years has been out of hand while the actual feature changes have slowed to a crawl or even gone backwards (looking for you headphones jack). Especially with "certain" greedy manufacturers who were recently charging $100 for 16 or 32GB of flash. Even now, $150 to go from 64 to 256 is a ripoff.
People simply don't need the new phones because there's nothing to differentiate them. It's not even sexy or shiny when you can't tell the difference...especially when you're force to stuff them in a case that doubles the size.
I'm still waiting for someone to take the chance on a thicker phone with a real battery. Apple did actually go a bit thicker on some of their latest phones but i don't think they actually added significant battery capacity.
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Apple did actually go a bit thicker on some of their latest phones
Get with the times, the thinnest phones came out in 2015. Pretty much every manufacturer has been producing thicker phones for the past 3 generations (not just the latest one, Apple's thinnest phone was the iPhone 6).
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The XR has the best battery life of any iPhone, and apparently some of the best battery life of any phone of this current generation. It comes in about even with the Note 9.
Apple makes approximately the same margins on their phones now as they ever have. Consider that the iPhone 3Gs was released in 2009 for $599. In today's money, that's a bit over $700, so just shy of the $750 that the XR costs.
Retail prices have crept up—and we can argue over whether Apple's prices should've crept up, given that man
Who is force you? (Score:2)
...especially when you're force to stuff them in a case that doubles the size.
Sorry, who is forcing you to do that?
I have had the same phone for almost 3 years without a case and I have never broken it. It's nothing extravagant for sure - a BLU Life One X. Just be careful with your damn phone! I think having a case somehow makes people think their phone is protected so they can treat it like it's not an expensive electronic device. Cases are no guarantee of anything, my wife and daughter have both broken their phones in the last year, and both were in good cases.
I think you are r
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When they build a phone with large sheets of glass on both sides, the majority of people need a case to avoid breaking it. Your anecdotal experience and obnoxious judgmental comment is not the norm. Nor is the idea that cases don't offer protection - maybe some don't but the large majority offer at least some protection.
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Re:Prices too damn high (Score:4, Interesting)
I went from an SE, to an XS Max, and it was worth it for the massive screen size increase,
Unless you are built like your average NBA player, when putting it to your ear you will look like a complete dork. But then again, who uses a smartphone for phone calls?
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I went from an SE, to an XS Max, and it was worth it for the massive screen size increase,
Unless you are built like your average NBA player, when putting it to your ear you will look like a complete dork. But then again, who uses a smartphone for phone calls?
What I find ironic is that Dell Streak 5 (back when a 5" screen was a "phablet") was constantly made fun of for being too large and yet now we're walking around with 6.5" screens glued to our faces or, worse, the tools using a full size ipad to take pictures. I guess Dell was almost a decade ahead of it's time :) Sorry fanbois
Re:Prices too damn high (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone I know "wants" a new phone, but they don't want to pay a grand.
You have it backwards. People DON'T want new phones. Their existing phones are "good enough", so they are waiting longer and longer between upgrades.
Since upgrade cycles are longer, the phone makers can only maintain revenues by pushing up the price of new phones, and adding silly features to justify the higher price. So far this strategy is working, with record revenues even in the face of falling unit sales.
I have a 4 year old iPhone 6. It works fine. I have no plans to replace it.
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I'm also in agreement. I'm keeping my 5SE as long as possible. Have already had to 'iFixit" several bits of trim and charger connector. In addition to the ridiculous cost of a new phone, I also cannot stand how big they have become. Doesn't anyone remember Will Farrell and the tiny phones...?
You're thinking Ben Stiller, Zoolander.
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4:30 into the clip.
You're both right.
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I felt the same way about my 6 until it fell in the lake. Not that I was eager to go diving for it in all the algae and pollution but it it had waterproofing I just might have.
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My wife and I took a look at new phones because her company is going draconian with what they allow to happen on her company-provided phone, and the prices are outrageous.
I'll stick with my 2+ year old device, and we'll find her something on eBay or whatever if / when her company takes their smartphones back to the stone age of being glorified email devices.
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You have it backwards. People DON'T want new phones.
Exactly. They want their existing phone to not break.
4S! (Score:2)
I am still using an iPhone 4S! :P
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I'm not buying a new phone until I can get one that has at least 46 camera's, no physical buttons, no connectors, a screen that flows over onto the entire backside of the phone, is half a millimeter thin, and runs about two hours on a charge. It would be the ultimate in phone technology, the ideal every manufacturer strives for!
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It's no different than the PC world. Software keeps moving "forward" adding tons of stupid features that endlessly bog down the system. So you need more CPU, more RAM, more storage to keep things moving along at a usable speed.
I don't want a new phone, but I DO want my existing one not to slow to a crawl trying to run the same apps (but pointlessly newer versions that are 'required') as a year or two ago.
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It's a medical fact that buying a new Apple product produces a huge blast of Seratonin for a while.
With each purchase it lasts less, however, so you need to buy more often.
(or at least buy a lot of accessories over the next few weeks, eg. airpods, to maintain the high)
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I recently got a new iPhone and unless Seratonin is the "angry neurotransmitter" I didn't get any blasts of it. There are many things that don't work as expected or are an annoyance, like constant "reminders" to set up Apple Wallet but the missing headphone jack is the source of most of the ire. It didn't even come with a headphone adapter so I had to buy one , which doesn't work. There's not a technical reason for it failing, it works fine for 1:45 then stops working with an "Unsupported accessory" mess
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I guess that the mind control drugs didn't work on me, because I held onto my last iPhone for 4 years before it finally died. I have the iPhone XR now. Something tells me that it will not last quite as long because it's made of glass.
Everyone is making it more complicated than it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we need article after article to tell us the obvious?
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Phones are good enough and not enough people care about a new camera to justify buying a new one. Smartphones, from any manufacturer, are not status symbols anymore.
Tell that to my wife. She salivates every time the Pixel 3 commercials come on. To hear her tell it a wider selfie camera is the only thing standing between us and a life of complete fulfillment.
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Tell that to my wife. She salivates every time the Pixel 3 commercials come on. To hear her tell it a wider selfie camera is the only thing standing between us and a life of complete fulfillment.
I'm not sure if I should be jealous of you or feel sorry for you.
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Jealous of what, exactly?
Re:Everyone is making it more complicated than it (Score:5, Funny)
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Jealous of what, exactly?
Being with someone who's clearly very easy to please.
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easy there mr. white knight, you might scuff that armor. Anyone who sees the ability to take wide angle selfies (not photos mind you, but selfies) as *THE* key feature is probably a bit on the shallow side.
Virtue signaling? reddit's that-o-way bub,
Re: Everyone is making it more complicated than it (Score:2)
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No matter how true your points are, the industry will fight a downhill reality. And the swarms of surfacedwellers in their socnets are susceptible. Consider the DeBeers diamond brainwashing.
They have every incentive to convince us that spending $1000 to go from capable-phone-1 to capable-phone-2 is "worth it", if not an utter necessity to being A Complete Human Being.
But it happened faster than for computers (Score:4, Interesting)
If I ever got a mod point, then I'd give you [KixWooder] an insightful mod for that comment rather than a mere interesting. Hypothetical since I never get mod points. Or maybe not even relevant, since I do want to comment and I think that would cancel my hypothetical mod point...
The most significant aspect is that we reached saturation much faster this time compared to computers, (but also relative to any other technology I can think of). The capabilities of the smartphones are beyond what most people can actually use, and even though the capabilities are increasing (and the prices are decreasing), there's no reason to buy a new one. The available new customers are just late adopters yielding ever lower profit margins (as the prices continue to fall).
Converting it to anecdote form (as a data point), what I am doing with my latest smartphone is only slightly better than what I was doing three smartphones ago. Actually, there was one major feature of my old PDA that I still haven't ported to the smartphone era, but mostly I've been looking for new things I actually want to do and not finding much. (Voice dictation is the main one, but it would run on the old phones, too.) The main reason I got a new smartphone this year was because it was free, but if prices keep falling, they may have to pay me to go through the hassle up the next "upgrade".
(Perhaps my perception of the lack of new and desirable features is just because I've mostly stopped playing time-wasting games? Most of the "new" games are just flashier versions of ancient classics. Interesting coincidence that I'm almost finished reading Fire in the Valley right now, and it mentions many of the old games (and brings back the memories). I don't play them now, but I'm confident I would still enjoy them. I just feel I have better uses for my time and absolutely no need for more and newer ways to waste time. (Well, except for that literacy development game no one has developed yet...))
Pay me to upgrade my smartphone? Well that's also how I'm feeling about the latest pains of Windows 10. Come to think of it, I didn't pay any money for those upgrades to Windows 10 and I have no desire to ever again pay Microsoft for anything... (Just my allergy to corporate cancers typing?)
Thousand Bucks? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think I'm alone.
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I also think we've reached a point where a thousand bucks is more than people want to spend on their "cell phone," regardless of how cool it is. My Samsung Galaxy S5 is long in the tooth, so I just replaced it - With an S7 that cost me $225 CAD.
I don't think I'm alone.
Yeah... My phone was only $200 new, but I plan on keeping it a long time anyway. I don't need anything faster (and they're only really making marginal gains now anyway) - and I got a phone that can change batteries. I already have three batteries (bought two extras- they came as a pair) - since battery is what normally dictates when a phone needs replacing, I figure at 2 years a battery, even if I can't find new replacements in a few years- I've still got 6 years worth of battery here with my current phon
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I also think we've reached a point where a thousand bucks is more than people want to spend on their "cell phone," regardless of how cool it is.
I bought a fairly expensive LG (hey, it had a headphone jack, premium luxury feature right there). For all the touted processing power, the key build-in apps are very slow. You'd think that if they're selling a high-end phone, the actual phone dialing app could launch in under 5 seconds!
Maybe I'm an outlier, using a phone to actually make phone calls, but there really doesn't seem to be much of a difference anymore between the $300 phone and the $900.
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I also think we've reached a point where a thousand bucks is more than people want to spend on their "cell phone," regardless of how cool it is. My Samsung Galaxy S5 is long in the tooth, so I just replaced it - With an S7 that cost me $225 CAD.
I don't think I'm alone.
You've never been alone. There's always been a market for older / refurbished unit, as well as non-top tier phones. However you are alone in thinking that this is a new trend or a change. People are just as happy to fork out $1000 for a phone as they were in the past for cheaper top tier devices. The difference is *they don't need to*. What does a Galaxy S9 offer over my S7 (a $750 phone at launch)? There's no big driver to upgrade anymore. Android stopped adding killer hardware and referencing that in upgr
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I also think we've reached a point where a thousand bucks is more than people want to spend on their "cell phone," regardless of how cool it is.
How many people buying high priced phones pay for it in full?
People I know and work with spread out the payments over a 24 month period so it's easier on the wallet. So that $1,000 iPhone is actually $41.67 a month which to them doesn't seem as bad. And if they trade in their old iPhone when upgrading, it's even less.
That's why Apple has their iPhone upgrade program. They knew their high prices would be a turn off for some buyers, so to make upgrading appear less expensive, they created monthly payments and
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I'm pretty much the same. My old phone just recently died and to replace it I bought a new LG V20 (new, but it's obviously an older model). I paid right at $200 USD. It works absolutely fine and like the last one I'll use it until it dies or I manage to crack the screen (which in 10 years of smart phone use I've only managed to do once).
As a plus - that was one of the last phones with a removable battery. I don't think its an accident that the phone companies all decided to make the most failure-prone c
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... so you disagree with the decline in sales or what?
How can you blame $1000 phones for a decline and say you bought a $200 one?
If everyone was doing that there would t be a decline, so... who are you disagreeing with, the people or the availability of expensive phones nobody is forced to buy.
He bought a used/refurbished phone, so his sale wouldn't show up in the figures cited in the story. His sale does play a part in people paying for $1000+ phones, though, since I vibrant second hand market reduced the total cost of ownership of flagship phones.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're better off getting an external thermometer. Phones get hot- particularly batteries and CPUs. Its impossible to filter that out and figure out what the actual temperature is outside.
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Re:Still waiting for a another legitimate flagship (Score:5, Funny)
I'd put this under
- super useful while winter camping
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As for temp sensor, i dont think the note4 has one aside from the sensor for the SOC temp. I can't see an ambient temp sensor being all that accurate seeing as the phone is generally carried in a pocket or cause of the heat generated internally by the phone while in use. a $5 digital thermometer you could hang on your bag would probably provide far superior results.
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First it happened with PCs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Until that happens we should all prepare ourselves for wave after wave of dull non-innovative over-priced dreck.
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They could try listening to customers that don't need an extra CPU to support some esoteric AI function but instead want a larger and/or removable battery, the return of their headphones jack, a phone that doesn't shatter in 5 seconds if you don't have a case, and (for some) USB-C connectivity.
The minor incremental improvements to the camera are no longer worth buying a $1000 device. The cutesy changes to face-ID and in-screen fingerprint reading are...cutesy.
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Sentinel Island is a huge untapped market!
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What more could they actually add to a phone?
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X-ray vision and a taser? Harpoon gun?
I think I would settle for robustness.
We want less notches and more headphone jacks (Score:2)
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Plus we need a viable third OS. KaiOS looks promising, but it needs to be on flagship phones.
I don't care about notches or headphone jacks, at all. They're both fine. I don't want another ecosystem either, aside from competition moving my preferred platform forward through necessity.
The simple truth for me is that the iPhone XS isn't a big improvement over the X (I have both at my desk at work), and the Pixel 3 isn't a big improvement over the Pixel 2 (I have both at my desk at work).
The changes are so incremental now that it's hard to be excited about what the new one gets you. I plan on keepin
"Smart"-phones is wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah just like the computer is called the slow adder, because while it computes the user still can't add numbers together quickly.
Seriously who modded up that drivel.
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Wait a minute (Score:4, Insightful)
I know Penny Marshall wasn't the most attractive woman in the world - but I don't know how someone would confuse her with Martin Scorsese.
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replacement is down. Total users will still go up. (Score:3, Interesting)
So we'd expect annual sales to drop once the market is saturated (by definition)
I think they forgot (Score:2)
A phone, smart or other wise is an individually addressable network terminal. It's not a fashion accessory.
Once everyone has one, other than radical changes in technology (no, I don't mean "disruptive" garbage) or replacing broken equipment, at the prices as they are now, people have no reason to buy.
I've carried an S5 for about 5 years now. I got it to switch from Sprint to GSM and real LTE. It serves me well and when the 5G network deploys, I'll replace it. Until then, there is no real reason for me to
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You have to admit it beats the hell out of a Lear Siegler ADM3A.
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Or a 33ASR
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NOTHING beats an ASR33!
Depends on how you measure plateau (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're talking new sales of phones, yes we've reached a plateau. If we're talking about % of world population that use a cell phone... no, we haven't reached a plateau and won't for a long time.
The main difference is, phone sellers raised their prices so much that people want to hold onto their phones longer. When a new phone costs $200 you don't mind replacing it in a few years. When a new phone costs $1000 you would be peeved if you were forced to replace it in two years.
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The technology as evolved significantly both in computing power and software design for a cheaper phone to be more than enough for almost anyone.
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The high-end got more expensive, but at the same time the low-end got much better. A $200 phone now can perform so well, most people would not feel a need to upgrade for quite a while.
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My first smart phone last Christmas cost me $15, its fantastic! This is one market where you could tell that early adopters were going to pay for my great experience if I waited long enough. Posted from my second hand Xeon workstation.
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If we're talking new sales of phones, yes we've reached a plateau. If we're talking about % of world population that use a cell phone... no, we haven't reached a plateau and won't for a long time.
That will probably look more like an S-curve [wikipedia.org] but we're already far past the inflection point. Time per billion unique mobile users according to this [businessinsider.com]:
1st billion: 13+ years (they lack early history)
2nd billion: 4 years
3rd billion: 3 years
4th billion: 3.5 years
5th billion: 4 years
That's 5 billion of a world population of 7.6 including little kids - even in sub-Saharan Africa 70% of the population age 16+ have a cell phone. There's really just three poorly connected countries left in the world: Cuba, North Kor
Galaxy Note 4 Better than Galaxy Note 8 (Score:3)
It's called market saturation (Score:2)
Everyone who's going to buy one already has one. All that remains is the upgrade/refresh/break-fix treadmill.
Why would I "upgrade"? (Score:2)
My work pays for my phone and data (currently I have an iPhone 7 plus with unlimited data). I can upgrade every 18 months. I have been able to upgrade for about 3 months now, but I haven't done so. My current phone is still as good as the day I bought it in every aspect. There is absolutely nothing in the more current iPhone offerings that would tempt me to move over. I have too many apps to consider moving to Android. Maybe Apple will come out with something compelling next year, but based on the rumors so
Of course (Score:2)
Yeah, what do you do when everyone who wants a smartphone has one ? Unless you are one of the Apple fanboi who HAVE to have the latest, the phone you have is just fine. I've got a Galaxy S7 that I got for free for renewing my phone contract. Everytime a new phone comes out my attitude is "I'm not going to get a new phone unless either this one dies or I get it for free." I mean, do you really have to have the latest?
Time to cannibalize the PC market (Score:5, Interesting)
If they make a decent interface from a phone to a real monitor, (and they get their butts out of their heads when it comes to bluetooth support for mouse and keyboard) then most people's use-case for owning anything other than a phone really diminishes.
I don't know if it has to be wired. Mirroring the screen via chromecast didn't work so well for me, but maybe they could get it working. There's a few niche products out there that have a dock, but they didn't catch on.
I could see a world where we all just walk around with our main computer on our body all the time. Instead of a work computer or a rig at home. A workstation would just be a chair, monitor, keyboard/mouse, wifi, and some place to plug in. And of course a bitchin' VR supporting super-computer next to a cybernetic psychic dolphin.
Limiting factor (Score:4, Insightful)
For every computer that must interact with humans, there is a limiting factor....the human.
This happened to desktops. They got so fast that the biggest slice of CPU time went to waiting on me, the memory was big enough to hold anything I could conceivably ever want to work with, and I couldn't take enough pictures to fill the hard drive.
So people moved to laptops, because they were becoming just as powerful but portable. Then they became just as powerful, and the point of buying a new one went away.
So people moved to phones, which were more portable. I can't think of any app I have that doesn't spend more time waiting on me than I does processing. There is no point of adding more megapixels to camera, and it stores more pictures than I can be bothered to cycle through. Other than a broken phone (and, I bought a Kyocera this time to avoid that scenario) what is the point of spending $1k on another one that will just spend MORE time waiting on me?
There is little competition... (Score:2)
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I think the price is only a minor factor .... (Score:2)
A lot of people are saying the decline is because "people don't want to pay $1000+ for the latest phone!". I'd say that's far less of an issue than the fact that the market is finally saturated with really good cellphones!
For many years, you had a situation where the people with enough money would always buy the latest and greatest phone, and typically hand down their old one to another family member, trade it in, or sell it online (eBay, Craigslist, etc.) at a big discount. The thing is? When cellphones w
Market Saturation (Score:2)
If there are no new markets for manufacturers to sell to, then there's little new gr
five stages of leash (Score:2)
Move over five stages of grief, we're at the fourth stage of leash.
The fifth stage of leash is where the hapless victim becomes adamant that the codependent relationship (who really controls that pesky CPU?) and corporate surveillance is all in your own best interest, and for your own good.
Father knows best.
Long live the hunchback salute.
No we're not (Score:2)
We're No Longer in Smartphone Plateau. We're in the Smartphone Decline.
We're not. We may be in the Smartphone Sales Decline because we're effectively in a Smartphone Feature Plateau, but we definitely are not in a Smartphone Decline.
The Market is Secure (Score:2)
What seems to have passed everyone's notice is that we have successfully raised an entire generation (with spillover to older generations) that have become unable to go poop unless they take their smart phone with them.
So there will always be some demand even if the new features aren't driving otherwise-unneeded upgrades.
Decrease in growth != Smartphone decline (Score:2)
It really irritates me that people describe falling growth as a decline.
-Any product reaches market saturation.
-Sales will shrink because of maximum penetration.
Smartphones in decline isn't less unit sales being made, it would be fewer smartphones being used.
Hooray - we don't need 5 phones per person (Score:2)
I tossed out my box of six smart phones from the last 10 years of upgrades. I expect to go down to about 25% the phone purchasing rate as the current generation is capable enough for my needs. Looks like smartphone makers innovated them right out of a job, that's progress!
Re:Need more apps (Score:4, Funny)
Nope. What we need is more peop^Wcustomers.
If we can manage to double the population over the next five years then the smartphone manufacturers should see a return to previous growth figures.
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Samsung's software is shit indeed. So install an alternative rom, like LineageOS.